I am reading and enjoying the fourth (?) volume of Alan Bennet’s “Diaries,” published last month. Here are two highly prescient entries:
7 January 2019: When Trump destroys the world those who are left will look at one another and wonder why nobody stopped him.”
And, a few days later:
16th January, 2019: “. . .Jacob Rees -Mogg . . .Boris Johnson, ‘Sir’ John Redwood . . .gentlemen who have never been in two minds about anything
Post Script (added Thursday, 16th April) A letter in yesterday's Guardian (15/04/26) from a John Deards of Warminster, Wiltshire, commends Bennett's political acumen by quoting the self-same 2019 comment on Trump in the diaries, as above. I'm rather chuffed that Keynesian Liberal got there first.
ng except where their own self-interest lies.”
Jacob Rees -Mogg . . .Boris Johnson, ‘Sir’ John Redwood . . .gentlemen who have never been in two minds about anything except where their own self-interest lies
ReplyDeleteWhile true about Mr Johnson (I always said that he would be a great Prime Minister exactly as long as we could arrange for the national interest, ie, getting out of the European Union, to coincide with his personal interst, and so it proved: he achieved that great project but then almost immediately the flaws in his ministry became apparent), but it seems to me that Mr Rees-Mogg never acts according to his self-interest but only and always according to his principles as a conservative Roman Catholic.
That is, in order to work out what Mr Rees-Mogg will think about an issue you needs only to ask, ‘What would be the conservative Roman Catholic position on this?’ and that will be it. Mr Rees-Mogg’s personal circumstances rarely if ever come into it.
Now you may not like those principles - indeed you may hate them - but it seems clear to me that that is how Mr Rees-Mogg thinks.
(Same as how, on the other side, if you want to know what Mr Corbyn thinks you need only ask ‘what would a not-particularly-intelligent student Trot from the seventies think about this?’ and you would be right.)
Brexit: “a great project” 😂
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